SEGA: Relaunch of Shenmue was planned before Shenmue III

After a long wait, SEGA finally announced the re-launch of the Shenmue games in current systems. Although some might think that this collection will come due to Shenmue III, the truth is that the company had been thinking about this option for some time.In an interview with IGN, SEGA Europe's executive vice president, John Clark, mentioned that the idea of launching Shenmue I & II emerged a long time ago, even before the disclosure of Shenmue III at E3 2015."We saw the noise around the announcement of Shenmue III, and we saw the demand for this game.The ports of Shenmue and Shenmue II had been a discussion before Shenmue III, but I think it all helped to create awareness internally and externally," Clark said. Thus, the expectation about the next game of the franchise was key in this process, so SEGA felt more confident in promoting the relaunching of Shenmue I & II.

However, Clark considered that the ports of Shenmue would have happened one way or another, even without the existence of Shenmue III, due to the popularity of the Japanese games and the interest of the people to know this classic."I think it was inevitable that Shenmue I & II would come to light, the western market was expanding in its desire for more Japanese content," he said. According to Clark, the tendency to relaunch SEGA games in the West and on other platforms began with the port of Valkyria Chronicles for PC in 2014. To this, we must add the success of Bayonetta and Vanquish on PC and the growing popularity of the Yakuza series outside Japan.Thanks to the public's response, and other factors, Clark noted that they saw an opportunity to bring back the Shenmue collection. In addition, he mentioned that "there are more games on the list" of future ports, although he avoided giving details. He added that, for the time being, the development team is focused on Shenmue.Shenmue I & II will debut on Xbox One, PlayStation and PC sometime in 2018 with a price of $ 29.99 USD. This collection will have visual improvements, support for achievements and trophies, the possibility of choosing between classic and renewed controls, a new user interface, audio in English and Japanese, as well as scalable screen resolutions.